“And your age?” I could swear he’s holding his breath.
“Twenty-one.” He releases the breath and I not sure if that’s the answer he wanted, or why he would even care.
“Why mathematics?” he asks. I brace myself for sexist generalizations that don’t come. He seems genuinely interested.
“Two reasons, mainly. I’m good at it. And there are a lot of directions I could go in career-wise with a math degree,” I explain. “I could teach, of course. But I could also go into tech, or shift to engineering with more schooling.”
“And why not mathematics?”
I weigh my answer. I’ve gone over it in my head a hundred times: what I’ll tell the dean. What I’ll tell my parents, who sacrificed so much to give me a leg up for college. For years, they supported me in traveling soccer, spending thousands of dollars and logging thousands of miles so that I could compete with the big dogs. When that plan blew up, they still had my back. But I don’t want to tell Cameron about any of that. I’d rather have him think I’m selfish or flighty than an object of pity.
“Math was always my Plan B,” I explain. “After the car wreck that stunted my social life, I threw myself into my studying and found out that math is my thing. Academic Decathlon, Mathlete, Quiz Bowl—the nerd trifecta.”
Cameron looks genuinely impressed, and actually I am pretty proud of myself. I just wish I wasn’t on the brink of losing all my momentum—not to mention my scholarships.
“So, if I need any calculations done, you’re my girl?”
“Your woman,” I correct, then regret it when my face heats. “And yes. In fact, if you tell me how many miles it is to Palm Springs, I can calculate how long it will take to get there based on my precise rate of speed, adjusting for traffic at a factor of…”
I trail off, because I’ve now gone full math geek.
“Amazing,” Cameron says.
“I can also calculate someone’s height based on pictures of them holding everyday objects,” I can’t resist adding.
“Seriously? I’m impressed.”
“I think you’re the first man who’s been wowed by my numbers skills,” I admit. “Maybe I should add that to my Tinder profile. If I had a Tinder profile, I mean.”
My face burns hot. Why did I say that?
Cameron
I am impressed with Marisa’s math skills. But that’s not what’s drawing me to her. I could already tell that she is smart and motivated. Even if she hadn’t given me her academic history, I would have seen it in her commitment just to get me, a rude stranger, all the way to their destination. Sure, the first thing I noticed about her was her looks, but the more I listen to her, the more I’m attracted to the whole person.
For all the good that does me, which is none.
Still, when I see her blush, I can’t resist: “Hold up, Marisa. Tinder profile? I hope you’re being careful out there.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” she retorts. “And neither is my friend Lucia, the one who insists that I need to make said profile.”
“I wasn’t trying to boss you,” I say. Because I wasn’t. No matter how much it grates at me that she could be out there being taken advantage of by random men who may not appreciate her. Who may treat her poorly. A surge of some protective instinct washes over me. I’m insanely jealous of any man who gets to undress Marisa, touch her body, and bring her pleasure.
“I haven’t dated much,” Marisa says. I don’t know what to make of her statement—or is it a confession? “I was focused on getting into college, then staying in college. As for the dating apps, I’m… Well, as you can probably tell, I’m a little self-conscious about my scars. Plus, stranger danger and all that. I’ll drive random people, but that doesn’t mean I want to meet up with them in the wild.”
“Stranger danger, I get,” I tell her. “But as for the scars, any man who would treat you as ‘less than’ for something like that isn’t a man who deserves your company.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she says. “But it’s still a hell of an icebreaker. Not all men are like you.”
Intriguing statement. “Like me, how?”
“Like… Not caring about scars, I guess? I don’t know.” There’s something she’s not saying, and I’m dying to know what it is.
“You don’t know?” I prompt.
She focuses her attention on a safe lane change before answering. “The scars go all the way down the side of my body. I’m not sure if that would be something to mention to a guy early on, or just wait for the ‘big reveal’. Or, like you implied, maybe I’m making too much of it and instead it’s some other issue.”
“What kind of issue?” Issues are something I know a little about.
“I don’t know.” She taps the steering wheel in frustration. “My friend Lucia, the psych major, has posited everything from fear of intimacy to PTSD.”
“Sounds like something that would require a professional diagnosis,” I comment. Then, unbelievably, I open up. “My therapist traces my commitment issues to my mom leaving when I was seven.”
Her eyes move to mine. “Your mom… left?”
Instantly, the memories wash over me. Seven-year-old me coming home from the first day of second grade, excited to share a new chapter book, only to find that my mother had given up. Bailed. Left me alone with him. No birthday cards or holiday gifts sent from parts unknown could ever make up for that.
“Yes,” I confirm. “Actual parental abandonment in the legal sense. I think I’ve funded my therapist’s summer home.”
“And now your dad is dying.” Empathy infuses her voice, and I know she’s got the wrong idea about my father and my relationship to him. But I don’t want to fill her in and add to the pity party.
“It looks that way.” I think of all the times my dad threatened to send me to an orphanage when I was too young to realize that orphanages aren’t really a thing these days.
“Lucia says everyone is messed up in some fundamental way,” Marisa says. “Once she’s a licensed psychologist, she is either going to help a lot of people or make bank listening to them pour their guts out.”
“But here we are pouring our guts out to each other for free.”
“You’d be surprised what I hear in this car.” For some reason, her words diminish our conversation. Is she just listening to me because it’s her job? Or to kill time? I want to take back everything I’ve shared.
“I can imagine,” I offer.
She seems to pick up on my retreat. “But you’re the first person I’ve told any of my shit to, Cameron.”
Again, that warmth washes over me. “Cam. My friends call me Cam.”
Marisa
“Well, Cam, you are a good listener.”
He’s so close to me I can literally feel his heat. Can he read my mind? Does he know that I’m insanely attracted to him, and how that’s thrown me completely upside down?
I live inside my head until we reach Palm Springs and Cam navigates us past rows of palm trees to the hotel he’d found online earlier.
“Just park by the office, please,” he says. “I’ll get us set up with a couple of rooms.”
Once he heads toward the lobby, I grab my phone out of its holder and make a quick call to Lucia. She knows only the bare details that I’ve accepted a side job driving and that my client is almost certainly not a serial killer. And if he turns out to be the next Ted Bundy, at least my friend has his driver’s license.
“I Googled your sweet ride,” Lucia says immediately. “He owns GeoCam Data, which employs nearly one hundred people in its Sacramento and Davis offices. He must be rich as fuck.”
“Stalker,” I blurt. I don’t know if I want to know more about Cam or as little as possible.
Lucia ignores me and continues. “My brief research indicates no red flags with a Mr. Cameron Cole. No murdering, for sure. Murder would be bad for business.”
“Good to know,” I say grimly.
“I’ll always have your back.”
>
I swallow a lump in my throat and aim for levity. “You just don’t want the trauma of identifying my body.”
“Baby, I live for trauma. Trauma is my business.”
“You’re… weird, Lucia.”
“Thank you.”
“He’s on his way back. Gotta go. Thanks, Luc.” Cam is walking out of the lobby. His face is unreadable, but the way he moves his body is all confidence and control. For a moment, I allow myself to imagine what it would be like to watch him lose that control. To give it up to me. Like he did with that smile. That laugh.
My pointless imagining doesn’t get any further because Cam gets back into the car, shaking his head.
“Full up,” he says. “No rooms at any price. Something to do with the holidays combined with some regional music festival for New Year’s. She said the only place that might have rooms is up the road a few miles.”
I turn on the ignition. “I don’t care if it’s a haunted murder hotel. If there are rooms, we’re getting them.”
Cameron
This woman amuses the hell out of me, and makes me feel… lighthearted? I don’t even know the name for it; it’s so unfamiliar. “I, for one, would pass up a murder hotel.”
“Are you superstitious?” she asks, as if the conversation is a perfectly natural one instead of something out of a Hitchcock movie.
“Actually, a little,” I admit. Marisa hands me her phone so I can punch in the address of the second hotel. I want to add my phone number to her contacts, but I resist. “Mainly, I don’t want to get murdered. Especially in a hotel.”
“Where would you prefer to get murdered?”
“Are you seriously asking me if I have a murder location preference?” I slip the phone into the holder on her dashboard and give her a moment to get her bearings.
“No, I accept that zero murder is acceptable,” she says. “Forgive my gallows humor. I blame my friend Lucia.”
“The same friend who psychoanalyzes you for free?”
“The one and only,” Marisa says. “But she loves me to pieces, so I take the bad with the good.”
This time, when we get to the hotel, Marisa comes in with me.
“You’re in luck.” The clerk, who is about Marisa’s age, looks up from his phone. “I have one room left.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” I look over and Marisa is rolling her eyes. “That does not happen in real life.”
“Is there a problem?” the clerk asks dryly. I read his name, Bradley, off his name tag. “It’s the holiday season. This is a resort town. Call around if you want, but you’ll find yourself right back here.”
Bradley taps his pen with the impatience of someone who can take your business or leave it. I hate being in that position. Usually, people are begging to do business with me. It’s taken me years—decades, even—to build up my confidence level. Power helps. Money helps even more.
I snap back to the present. “No,” I say. I slap my credit card onto the counter. “No problem, Bradley. Thank you.”
He takes the card, then gives the two of us a closer look. I catch him grimace when he sees Marisa’s scar. A wave of protectiveness, or maybe it’s possession, comes over me. No fucking way is this guy going to make her feel inferior.
“Here are your room keys.” Bradley places the plastic cards on the counter, looking at me only and speaking in a monotone. “One for each of you. Have a pleasant stay.”
I want to tell him off, but more than that, I don’t want to embarrass Marisa by calling attention to the situation. Still, I am fucking pissed. I count in my head to calm down. One, two, three…
Marisa
He wanted to tell off that clerk. Maybe Cam is embarrassed at the obvious mismatch between us. Before the accident, I could have been paired with someone as hot as him. Keaton was the star quarterback, and even though I wasn’t from the “rich” side of town like he was, my looks almost made us equals in the eyes of the cliques at our high school.
I should be immune to grimaces from strangers by now, but this one still stings. Cam—Cameron—is my passenger. A payment. He’s nothing to me. I keep reminding myself of this. So why do I care that this random guy thinks someone like him would never be with someone like me? I shouldn’t care. I don’t.
I turn toward the door of the lobby, but before I can process what’s happening, Cameron is spinning me back around. His face is close to mine and I can feel his breath in my ear, sending a tingle down my body. “Can I kiss you?” he whispers.
“Um, yes?” The answer comes out before I can stop it. And then his mouth is on mine. He’s kissing me: long, deep pulls of his lips on mine.
And I’m kissing him back, at first tentatively, but within seconds I’ve parted my mouth and am nipping at his bottom lip. Cameron tastes like mints and passion, and his kiss is so intense that I almost believe that this public declaration is real.
“Looks like we get to spend the night together after all, sweetheart,” Cameron says for our audience of one. Bradley is wide-eyed, probably thinking we are engaged in a torrid affair, or a couple saving ourselves for our wedding night.
But I couldn’t care less about Bradley in this moment. I float out the door, back to my car. Somehow, I know that Cameron didn’t kiss me out of pity. Somehow, I know that there was a percentage of that kiss that wasn’t fake.
“That was—”
He gives me a heated look and fills in the blank: “Enthusiastic?”
“That, too.” I don’t want to say it. I hate that I have to say it. “You didn’t have to.”
His eyes bore into me, and he answers in a clipped tone. “I wanted to kiss you. You agreed. I enjoyed it, and I think you did, too.”
“Fine, then.”
We get in the car, and the literally thirty-second drive to the parking spot in front of the hotel room seems to take one billion awkward years. I stop and pop the trunk. I grab Cameron’s cash—my cash—from the glove compartment and shove it into my purse. He reaches into the back seat for his briefcase. Wordlessly, we get out and head to the trunk. I mentally thank Past Marisa for making sure I always have emergency clothes and toiletries on hand.
“Look, I can sleep in the car,” he says.
I’m surprised. No one wants to sleep in a car. I’ve done it myself and it never stops sucking. I also feel a stab of disappointment.
“You don’t need to sleep in the car, Cameron.” I hoist my bag and then his out of the trunk. It was automatic.
“Marisa, you’re not my… I mean, you don’t have to…” He looks mortified and I love it. I’m grinning. I do have power over this man.
“Go on, sir.”
A different look comes over his face, one with a heat that makes wetness gather between my legs as I take a step back, gauging his reaction.
“Don’t call me sir,” he says quickly. “I know that you’re… performing a service, but let’s just…”
I let him off the hook. “It’s fine, Cameron. Cam. I’m just messing with you.”
“Messing with me?”
“Um, joking around? Being silly?” I raise an eyebrow. “Are you unfamiliar with the concept?”
“Somewhat,” he says wryly. He picks up his bag and gestures toward the door. “Let’s put our stuff away, find some food, and then sort things out.”
Cameron
Half an hour later, we’re at a chain diner close to the hotel. I’m not even hungry. I just needed to get distance between Marisa and me and that hotel room. I saw immediately that there was only one bed, because of course there was. After having had a taste of this woman, it’s going to take all my willpower to fall asleep without imagining her body on me, under me, and—
“So, I’m thinking breakfast for dinner.” Marisa is scanning the menu while I try not to objectify her. “Specifically French toast. With a side of eggs.”
My eyes scroll past pictures of stuffed hash browns, eggs benedict, and omelets until I see cinnamon roll pancakes and my heart stops. Fucking memories
. I shove the menu away. “I’m not hungry.”
Marisa’s not buying it. She places a hand over mine. Warm. Comforting. Here. “Are you okay?”
Fuck it. I won’t be seeing her again after this trip. And my therapist hasn’t managed to break through this particular wall. I swallow hard. I point at the photo on the menu. “My mother used to make cinnamon pancakes. I forget about her, and then I see something random like this and… Never mind. It doesn’t matter. They’re just pancakes.”
Marisa squeezes my hand. I look up, fearing the pity I will see in her eyes. Instead, all I see is empathy. “It matters, Cam. Don’t think it doesn’t. Everything that happens to us matters. That’s just the way it is. I’m sorry.”
I ask her the question that runs through my head on a loop at times like these. “What kind of mother makes her kid cinnamon pancakes from scratch one day and disappears the next?”
“The kind who doesn’t deserve you, Cameron.” I am half in love with Marisa in this moment. If I could trust, or love, this is the type of woman I’d marry. Who the hell am I kidding? It’s Marisa herself who I want. I’d somehow talked myself into thinking my attraction to her was all sex and lust; a fluke of the human body. But it’s more than that. She’s special. I’ve known her less than a day, and already I feel closer to her than I do to almost anyone in my life. Is that pathetic, or is it fate?
Thankfully, the server comes to take our orders. Once she leaves, I use the opportunity to lighten the mood.
“Anyway, my mother is dead now,” I say bluntly.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” I bare my wounds further. “I only found out a couple of years ago. My therapist urged me to track her down, for ‘closure’ or some shit, and through public records I learned that she’d died when I was ten. I’d spent two decades of my life resenting a dead woman who couldn’t come back for me if she’d wanted to.”
His Driver: An Instalove Road Trip Romance Page 3
